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RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Blair Peach & Ian Tomlinson, Another Police Murder

Blair was an east London teacher who had come over from New Zealand. He was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Anti Nazi League. He was killed protesting at the Nazi National Front (NF), which was holding a meeting in the predominantly Asian area of Southall, west London. His police killers still walk free.

“As the police rushed past him, one of them hit him on the head with the stick. I was in my garden and saw this quite clearly. He was left sitting against the wall. He tried to get up, but he was shivering and looked very strange. He couldn’t stand. Then the police came back and told him, ‘Move! Come on, move!’ They were very rough with him and I was shocked because it was clear he was seriously hurt.”

When the lockers and some houses of Special Patrol Group members were later searched coshes, knives, bayonets, swords and Nazi regalia were found. The unit was later disbanded. But since then the police have been consistently deployed to defend Nazi events in Britain.

His supporters, The Friends of Blair Peach have now written to the Met to address the whitewash that meant no copper was charged with anything despite the Nazi regalia in one of the attacking cop’s home & locker and witness testimony of police brutality.

OPEN LETTER TO THE HOME SECRETARY AND THE COMMISSIONER OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE

On April 23rd 1979 at a demonstration against the presence of the far right National Front in Southall a friend of mine, Blair Peach, was struck over the head by an, as yet, still unidentified member of the Special Patrol Group and died the next day from injuries sustained from the blow.

A subsequent enquiry into the events of that day by Commander Cass has never been released in full but we are able to say that a number of things have been established. When the lockers of three of the named officers were opened and the home of another was searched the following items were found.

All of these things, but especially the Nazi memorabilia found in the home of PC Bint, should have given rise to the greatest of concern about the political orientation of at least some of the members of the SPG. The investigation conducted by Commander Cass at the time has never been made fully public but it believed that he recommended that at least six officers should have been prosecuted for, amongst other things, murder and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Although an early day motion was signed shortly in 1980 by nearly 150 MPs demanding a public enquiry, none was ever conducted. One of the MPs who signed was Jack Straw who, when he became Home Secretary, refused to conduct the very investigation he had asked for nearly two decades earlier.

Various ruses have been used by the Metropolitan Police over the years to prevent the publication of the report. The latest is a refusal under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that it ” would affect the immediate family and friends of Blair Peach, owing to the circumstances of the death and the information contained within the report”. As far as is known, the family has never been consulted about this and someone has taken the decision on their behalf.

It is highly unlikely that, had the inquest taken place today, the jury would have returned a verdict of misadventure. A number of factors effecting the original decision of death by misadventure would not have applied. The press and the political establishment almost uniformly blamed the anti fascists for the violence. Press cuttings of the time describe a race riot which it most certainly was not. It was a riot by police officers, which could have been prevented by the Metropolitan Police asking the Home Secretary to ban the march.

The Met themselves must take a great deal of responsibility for the events, not only of that day, but for several years of provocative National Front matches, many of them through areas with high proportions of ethnic minorities, with easily predictable results: vilence, arrests and convictions, damage to property and finally death.

There is no longer any excuse for the Cass report not to be released in full and the longer it is not, the more it looks as if the police are covering up another shameful page in their history. This is not an exercise in retribution or revenge, simply an attempt to get justice for Blair and to establish the fact that people have right to protest peacefully without the risk of injury or death from those whose job it is to preserve the conditions for peaceful protest.

I look forward to hearing from you both.

The Friends of Blair Peach

So 30 years later and…looks like they have done it again, we have already seen the difference between the police version of events and the publics regarding the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests, but now the gap is wider than ever. The version of events propagated through the media by the police-

The man had collapsed within a police cordon set up to contain the crowds who had assembled in central London and the City to protest over the G20 summit. There were 63 arrests on the day.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was being notified last night. Scotland Yard said the alarm had been raised by a member of the public who spoke to a police officer on a cordon at the junction of Birchin Lane and Cornhill in the City.

He sent two medics through the cordon line and into nearby St Michael’s Alley where they found a man who had stopped breathing. They called for ambulance support at about 7.30pm and moved him back behind the cordon where they gave him cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

“The officers took the decision to move him as during this time a number of missiles – believed to be bottles – were being thrown at them”, said a police statement. The ambulance service took the man to hospital where he died.

A London ambulance spokesman said: “Our staff immediately took over the treatment of the patient and made extensive efforts to resuscitate him both at the scene and on the way to hospital.”

Now what is coming out-

Investigators are examining a series of corroborative accounts that allege Ian Tomlinson, 47, was a victim of police violence in the moments before he collapsed near the Bank of England in the City of London last Wednesday evening. Three witnesses have told the Observer that Mr Tomlinson was attacked violently as he made his way home from work at a nearby newsagents. One claims he was struck on the head with a baton.

Photographer Anna Branthwaite said: “I can remember seeing Ian Tomlinson. He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet and shield two or three minutes before he collapsed.” Branthwaite, an experienced press photographer, has made a statement to the IPCC.

Another independent statement supports allegations of police violence. Amiri Howe, 24, recalled seeing Mr Tomlinson being hit “near the head” with a police baton. Howe took one of a sequence of photographs that show a clearly dazed Mr Tomlinson being helped by a bystander.

A female protester, who does not want to be named but has given her testimony to the IPCC, said she saw a man she later recognised as Tomlinson being pushed aggressively from behind by officers. “I saw a man violently propelled forward, as though he’d been flung by the arm, and fall forward on his head.

“He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement. I noticed his fall particularly because it struck me as a horrifically forceful push by a policeman and an especially hard fall; it made me wince.”

Mr Tomlinson, a married man who lived alone in a bail hostel, was not taking part in the protests. Initially, his death was attributed by a police post mortem to natural causes. A City of London police statement said: “[He] suffered a sudden heart attack while on his way home from work.”

But this version of events was challenged after witnesses recognised the dead man from photographs that were published on Friday.

So there’s a lesson in this, they get away with it and like any good recidivist they do it again. Now then a reminder of the sort of police involved in the G20 operation, just swap SPG for TSG –

The Met has confirmed that since 1992 all six (TSG) officers involved in the Ahmad assault had been subject to at least 77 complaints. When lawyers for Ahmad asked for details of these allegations it emerged that the police had “lost” several large mail sacks detailing at least 30 of the complaints.

Created in January 1987, the territorial support group (TSG) is on the frontline of policing in the capital, and its 720 officers are often the first on the scene of major disturbances. TSG units have policed every march and demonstration in London over the past two decades, including the poll tax protests, BNP disturbances and “stop the City” demonstrations. They also provide anti-terrorism support and have firearm and taser expertise. They will be on the frontline again next month when they help to police protesters who are expected to gather for the G20 summit in London.

Oh and-

More than 1,000 serving police officers in Britain have criminal convictions, the Liberal Democrats have reported. [Police Service of Northern Ireland refused to answer the Lib Dems’ request for information.] More than half of the 1,063 convictions relate to speeding or other motoring offences; 77 officers have convictions for violence and 96 for dishonesty.

9 Responses to “Blair Peach & Ian Tomlinson, Another Police Murder”

But to be honest will we ever get to the bottom about what really happened to Blair Peach or even Ian Tomlinson..?

The IPCC, funnily enough, had wanted to put forward a speedy press release under the guise of ‘natural causes’ and now independent witnesses have come forward to scupper their whitewash tho’ it still will happen. And tha night on the 1st the cops were baton whacking happy!!

The old SPG were violent thugs, and indeed the baton has passed (pardon the pun!) to the TSG (from my own account) came storming in on the protest on the Thursday afternoon at Bank, on the 2nd April.

One cop in particular was grabbing and assaulting people. And one of my pix has been passed onto the IPCC and other legal parties, though I don’t hold out much hope but at least there was some visual documentation and if that means a cop is held to account eventually..then good.

The baton!
I think the IPCC is even less I than it ever was, we need a real oversight body and real investigators of police criminality. Although at the moment as you say not much optimism in any of the institutions being anything but authoritarian and self interested.
The police version was complete bollocks, but even when they lie under oath as in the DeMenezes inquest the bloody judge excused them like they were rascally schoolkids. I have also read Craig Murray who was musing at the way small groups of violent people were allowed to act in front of the media and the police did nothing, who were they?

PS: this also reminded me of the spin and lies about Hillsborough. Cops were pelted with bottles etc. when they tried to get to Ian Tomlinson (pix show him lying in the road with cops just standing around…it’s the protesters who helped him!) and the same lies were concocted around Hillsborough i.e. fans rioting etc. Again, it was the fans, not the cops, who looked out and helped each other!

And families, friends of the dead and the survivors still want answers 20 years on and justice. The coroner decided to have a cut off period of 3:15pm stating that people were dead at that point yet evidence contradicts that assertion and that some people were still alive at 3:15pm. The cut-off period was in essence to protect the cops.

A really excellent bk, with good analysis is Phil Scraton’s bk, Hillsborough.

I remember that, another fixing of the criteria which dismissed whole areas of misconduct and cover up. It’s an old scam set the terms early to avoid jeopardy for the establishment.

And at the back of it all people will be intimidated by police who have free license to attack protest. The media also should stop printing police stuff without saying ‘police claimed’. And search for public witnesses to get their version, no more printing the cop story quick, a lie travels half way round the world before the truth’s got its shoes on.

when do the ipcc ever get to the truth,a whitewash all the time,the police thugs and bully boys who should mostly be inside keep getting away with it,please give us a government with the stength to sort these people out ,it goes very deep though,civil service everything,what an awfull state we have got in…we need a revolution

The Tomlinson death takes me back a bit more even than the De Menezes outrage for some reason. This (thirtieth) anniversary of Peach’s death might be something to do with it. Nostalgia for lost youth perhaps? I was a resident and ANL activist in Ealing. And pacifist. Mounted police chased me and several others round a churchyard and through a cordon of police with riot shields (they hurt) and I was held against a wall by a horse whilst the thug on its back hit me over the heard and shoulders with a baton. I fled with blood streaming from my head at about 5.55pm down the main road to Ealing where I met an arriving Rover police car with two or three smartly uniformed officers. Braid seeded to feature a lot in the back. I leant into it and said. and I think I used these exact words, “your people are behaving like Hitler’s thugs” and one officer replied with outraged but perfect diction “there are senior officers there” as if that would preclude the possibility to which I yelled “they’re a bunch of f*****g w*****s then” and ran off. They reversed back towards Ealing , it seemed as though after me although they probably were not, and I left the main road.